Development of Web Interface of Image Analysis System
DDGEL for 2D Gel Electrophoresis
Kyotetsu Kanaya 1
kanaya@hydra.mki.co.jp
Tatsuya Akutsu 2

Akira Ohyama 1
akr@hydra.mki.co.jp
Asao Fujiyama 3

takutsu@ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp
1
2
3

afujiyam@lab.nig.ac.jp

Department of Bioscience Systems, Mitsui Knowledge Industry Co., Ltd.
2-7-14 Higashinakano, Nakano-ku, Tokyo 164, Japan
Human Genome Center, Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo
4-6-1 Shirokanedai, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108, Japan
National Institute of Genetics, 1111 Yata, Mishima-city, Shizuoka 411, Japan1 Introduction
Recently, a method called RLGS (Restriction Landmark Genomic Scanning) has been developedin order to detect and analyze the genetic alterations by observing the entire genomic DNA after
separating DNA fragments in a single two-dimensional slab gel [1]. To analyze gel images obtainedby the RLGS method, a lot of tasks must be done: thousands of spots must be detected where eachspot corresponds to particular genetic landmark; a correspondence of spots between two images must
be detected; links between spots and genetic information must be classi ed and stored in a database.
We have been developing a software tool named DDGEL so that such tasks can be done automatically or semi-automatically [2], where similar systems have been developed by other groups [3, 4].
Previously, user interface of DDGEL was implemented using the X-WINDOW (X11R6) system. However, it is hard to install X-WINDOW on standard PCs (personal computers) and thus limited users(i.e., users having UNIX workstations) can use DDGEL. In order to make DDGEL more user-friendly,
we have newly developed a web interface for DDGEL, using which DDGEL can be easily accessedfrom standard PCs using standard web browsers such as NETSCAPE and INTERNET EXPLORER.

2 Web Interface
Although DDGEL is implemented on an UNIX workstation (server machine), users can access it fromstandard PCs through the web interface. A snapshot of the web interface is shown in Fig. 1.
The web interface has the following functions: (1) User identi cation/registration; (2) Spot detection; (3) Modi cation of spot data; (4) Database of reference gel image/spot data; (5) Addition andmodi cation of comments on image/spot data; (6) Spot matching (under construction). Note that,
although database of reference gel image/spot data is maintained on the server machine, users' gel
image/spot data must be maintained by users. Since a lot of image data may be input by a user andthe disk space of the server machine is limited, DDGEL does not maintain users' image/spot data.

3 Conclusion
Owing to the development of the web interface, DDGEL system has become a user-friendly tool for
2D gel image analysis. DDGEL with web interface will be available soon (seehttp://www.hgc.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp).
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Figure 1: Snapshot of the web interface of DDGEL.
Finally, we conclude with future work. Since the quality of the current spot matching module (algorithm) is not satisfactory, improvement of the module is the most important future work. Moreover,this module should be combined with the web interface.

Acknowledgement
This work is supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid \Genome Science" for Scienti c Research on Priority
Areas from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture in Japan.

References[1] Hatada, I. et al., A genomic scanning method for higher order organisms using restriction sites
as landmarks, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA., 88:9523{9527, 1991.
[2] Ohyama, A., Akutsu, T. and Fujiyama, A., A software tool for mapping human genome bychromosome-speci c two- dimensional electrophoresis method, Proc. Genome Informatics Workshop 1995, Universal Academy Press, Tokyo, 144{145, 1995.
[3] Sugahara, Y., Hayashizaki, Y. and Tanihata, I., An automatic image analysis system for RLGS
lms, Genome Informatics 1997, Universal Academy Press, Tokyo, 340{341, 1997.
[4] Takahashi, K., Nakazawa, M. and Watanabe, Y., DNAinsight: an image processing system for2-D gel electrophoresis of genomic DNA, Genome Informatics 1997, Universal Academy Press,Tokyo, 135{146, 1997.

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